Engineering Mentors Attitude/Role Towards Their NEM Counterparts

[MamaSpoldi]

Originally Posted by JamesBrown

I agree completely. I appreciate every thing that volunteers do, however it is important to draw this distinction. A Non-engineering mentor should work with the students interested in those fields teaching them about the business, logistics, and marketing (I am sure I am missing plenty that NEMs do) aspects of the team. By the same definition, an engineer who is not working to mentor the students is not a mentor he/she is a volunteer. It doesn't matter if you write a thousand lines of code for a robot, if you didn't teach and/or inspire the HS students as you did it then you are not a mentor.

I truly appreciate and whole-heartedly agree with this statement. I am what would be considered an EM, that is I have a degree in engineering and work with the students to teach them and help them (as needed) in programming the robot. However, I find that some engineering mentors I have encountered forget that it is about mentoring and not doing... and that mentoring includes: getting to know the students, and helping them find their niche, and teaching them to respect everyone on the team, and recognize everyone's contribution, and so much more. Woodie has set a very good example for all of us on that count... we all need to look to his example and remember that that is our goal.

Originally Posted by Brandon Holley

I know on our team at least, we have no shortage of mentors willing to help lead a prototype build or offer their opinion on some technical aspect of the robot. However, we have a massive shortage of people who are willing to lead some of the "less glamorous" aspects of the team. I would trade a technical mentor for a NEM any day of the week (for our team at least)

-Brando

Amen to that statement... as an EM I truly believe that the NEM is very often the unsung hero. I wish we had more of them!